Vishali Narayanan

As an instructional designer with a Master's in EdTech (from Concordia University, Montreal (Canada)), I work with the Canadian Red Cross to develop courses, workshops, and elearning the Red Cross's personnel with cultural safety and inclusivity at the forefront. My primary portfolio was to develop a 7-course training series on Indigenous communities and how to work with them during the Red Cross' crises. Interesting questions crop up in my work which I get to tackle and address on a daily basis: How do we truly be allies in the world of education and training? As adult learners, how do we unlearn (existing stigmas, notions, resistance, etc) as much as we learn new things? How feasible is it to tackle social-emotional elements of learning when designing training (especially when your audience is over 2000 people)? When designing for truly empowering and inclusive design, what is and what isn't within our scope, as instructional designers? What can we do, and how far can we push, when it comes to "colouring within the lines" and boundaries we are met with? These are questions that I got the chance to open and explore with senior leaders, junior personnel, and volunteers across the Canadian Red Cross (CRC), and I now wish to open up these doors of discussion with those beyond my organization as well.